What to be aware of with the new “Facebook Slap” and how to protect yourself and your business so you can not only survive, but you can thrive.

On today’s podcast Russell talks about the recently announced Facebook slap that is going to change everything for direct response marketers. He also reflects on some of what happened during the Google slaps years ago. Here are some of the helpful things you will hear in this episode.

Find out what the Facebook slap means and how it will change things for Russell and other direct response marketers.

See why Russell has experience with these sort of things and why that makes him well informed and qualified to help others.

And find out what you should be doing to get ahead of the game and not be hit so hard with the changes on Facebook.

So listen here if you want to find out how to stay profitable despite all the changes coming to Facebook.

Full Episode Transcript

Uh oh, the Facebook slap just happened and now you gotta get a funnel. Welcome to Marketing Secrets podcast.

Alright everybody, I have been prophesying of this for so long, so long. For those who are new, the newbies who have only online for a year or two years, or five years, or eight years, I wanted to give you a history lesson. The networks, they don’t like you or me, guess who they like, they like money from big brands who don’t annoy them, who just write big checks and have big, huge marketing budgets and don’t care if they’re profitable or not.

People like us, who care about direct ROI, us direct response guy, they don’t like us very much. But they endure for a little while because it’s what builds their platform, and then they smash us. So that’s what happened with Google back in the day. They were awesome, then they smashed us. That’s what happened to every platform since I’ve been around, for now 15 years.

You’ve probably heard of the Google slap, then the other Google slap, then the other Google slap, and then this and that. I kept warning people, don’t put all your eggs in Zuckerberg’s basket. Zuckerberg doesn’t care about you. I’ve been talking about that, in fact, I did a whole presentation at Funnel Hacking Live about that last year.

But it’s happening, the Facebook slap has officially begun. Zuckerberg just announced it about a week ago, and I want to let you guys know a couple of things. Because a Facebook slap is actually a really good thing for people like you and me who are doing funnels. If you’re not doing a funnel now, this is going to force you to finally learn and understand funnels.

Alright, so here’s the context, Zuckerberg came out and was like, “Hey, we’re going to change how Facebook’s algorithm works. So instead of having…” He said that this algorithm would make people spend less time on Facebook, which seems insane. But here’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to squeeze out the direct response marketers and build a bigger platform for the branding marketers.

So this is how it works. What they do is make it so what you will see now more so, is more of your actual friends. So your feed will have less business stuff and more brand stuff, excuse me, personal interaction. So you’ll see more of your friends and stuff, you’ll see fan pages and stuff like that are going to be dropping dramatically, and groups will go up, because groups they consider social interaction. So groups and your personal stuff, you’ll see a lot more of in your feed, and you’ll see a lot less of the business pages, fan pages, and ads.

So what’s going to happen, because there’s less stuff for you to scroll through and just mindlessly scroll, you’ll actually spend less time on Facebook, that’s his plan. So you’ll spend less time on Facebook, there’ll be less ad spots, and when supply and demand does that little thing, guess what happens? The price goes up.

So ad costs will be going up. They’re showing some stats and basically in the first quarter it’s supposed to be up, I can’t remember, 30 or 40%. And by the end of the year almost a 100% increase in ad costs. So what does that mean for people like us?

A couple of things, number one it means that the competition, a lot of these people who are just throwing up Facebook ads, and becoming ad experts overnight, they are going to be gone. They will not be able to sustain it anymore, and most of them will not be intelligent enough to diversify their traffic off of Facebook.

A couple of things for us Marketing Secrets people that are funnel hackers. We are smart enough to know there’s more than one way to drive traffic. Facebook is a source, not the only source. And if you’ve been looking at your business that way, then you’re fine. And if not, it’s now time to start diversifying, freak out. Yes, freak out, diversify now. If you wait for a year to diversify it, a lot of you guys will be in trouble. Just diversify now, start looking at other traffic sources.

Look at YouTube, do your own podcast, looking at all these things. Using this time now when ads are a little bit cheaper to drive people to these other networks to build up your podcast, to build up your email list and things like that, build up your medi chat list and those kind of things. Because the ad cost are going to dramatically go up.

Number two, we’ve been talking about this since day number one at Clickfunnels. Whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. That’s the first chapter, the introduction of Dotcom Secrets book. If you haven’t read it, go and read it. Dotcomsecrets.com, go get the book because it’ll help you understand that whoever can spend the most money to acquire a customer wins. As ad costs go up, you have to spend more money to acquire a customer. That’s actually a good thing.

That means all the little people who are just dabbling are going to go away becuas they’re not able to spend more money. For us, the intelligent ones who are studying marketing and sales and funnels, that’s okay. That’s why we build funnels.

You know, I think last year, 2017 a lot of people got away with one funnel and they made a really good income. I think that’s going to be harder and harder. I think understanding the concept of funnel stacking, we talk a lot about in our community here, where you have one funnel that then leads to the next funnel, is vital. It’s going to be vital to your success. Having a fully developed value ladder is going to be vital to your success.

Now a couple of things about value ladder that I want to just touch on. I wish I could re-write that whole chapter in Dotcom Secrets book, because everyone thinks they need these complex value ladders that got 80 steps. Clickfunnels right now has 3 steps, that’s it. Okay, we’ve got all the front ends on the front step, we’ve got Clickfunnels webinar and sales, Clickfunnels in the middle, and then we’ve got our coaching program that’s not even available right now, but will be after Funnel Hacking Live, on the back end.

So that’s it. It doesn’t have to be complex, but there needs to be levels. Because your front end funnels, one that used to be profitable, are going to be break even funnels. If that’s your entire business, you’re going to struggle.

So the good news is, the Facebook slap has come, we know it’s happening now. It’s not like when Google slapped us, it was like they just turned soft overnight, we all just got shutdown. Right now you’ve got about a year. Over the next year you’ll see your ad costs go up 20-100%. So just be aware of that. Now it’s time to start understanding that and putting in, “Okay, this funnel is to acquire customers, if I’m profitable right now, it’s awesome, am I going to be profitable in six months, if my ad costs double or if they go up 50%. If not, I can start tweaking that.

It’s like, Okay we’ve acquired a customer through this funnel, now we need to send them up the value ladder and there’s your profit.

So if you’ve been following me, you’re listening to this stuff, you’ve read the Dotcom Secrets book, you’ve read the Expert Secrets book, you’ve gone into this, this shouldn’t freak you out. But if you haven’t, you should be a little bit nervous. You should go get Dotcom Secrets, read it, understand sales funnels, value ladder, these are the core principles that have worked since day number one.

This is not something new. In fact, it’s crazy, the online world made this so easy. Traditional offline, I cut my teeth learning this game with Bill Glazer and Dan Kennedy and all these people who were doing direct mail and classified ads and TV. Where it’s like, nobody breaks even on TV, you lose money. And you lose money for 5, 6, 7 months before you’re profitable. That’s where my foundation came from, the Dotcom Secrets book teaches that foundation. I think we’ve been spoiled because it’s been so cheap to acquire media online.

And that’s been awesome, and hopefully new platforms will continue to rise up that we can come and arbitrage attention from it at a discount. But just be aware that right now, Facebook is now shifting. They’re making that transformation. This is the first Facebook slap.

I got a little mini slap about a year and a half ago. They shutting down ad accounts, but they took the gas pedal off that one and made it a little bit easier, which has been nice. But this one’s happening and it’s not going away. So it’s like, now is the time to prepare for it. Start to get better at acquiring customers at your front end funnel, and getting better at sending them to the next step.

This will be a huge theme at Funnel Hacking Live. I got some crazy, amazing presentations, they’re all by funnel hackers. You guys will be able to learn about some of these things. But right now I wanted to give you guys a voice of warning, because this is what’s happening.

But luckily this is not like a shot where you just get shot and you die like back in the Google days. We’ve got time, but it’s all about understanding that and preparing and building out your value ladder. Go back, read Dotcom Secrets again. Read it two, read it three times. Internalize those concepts, figure out your value ladder, identify it, figure out your break even funnels, acquire customers profitably now so you can get to the point where you’re breaking even in six months to a year from now and be able to start sending people up.

So the Google slap is here, but the funnel hackers don’t need to worry, it’s all going to be good. If you’ve been following the principles we teach you day number one, you’re protected, so don’t stress about it. But if you’re not, it’s time to start looking at that, start building out your value ladder, getting prepared, because it’s coming.

Alright you guys, appreciate you all, sorry I got a stuffy nose, I probably sound a little funny. But that’s about it. So I’m heading back into the office, today we’ve got Todd and Ryan and Nick and Karen and a whole bunch of people at the office, it’s so much fun. So I’m going to get back to work. We were up late last night working and now it’s early in the morning and we’re starting the game over again. I’m sure the next couple of days I’ll do a lot of podcasts and I’ll probably be really tired, so I apologize in advance.

If you’ve enjoyed this at all, please go to iTunes, rate us, review us, we had to re-create a new feed, so we are starting back over on the reviews and stuff like that, so please if you love this podcast, if you reviewed in the past, please come back and review it again, we’d appreciate that. And we’ll talk to you guys soon. Bye everybody.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.